August 31, 2010

"Every animated character is on it's own shapelayer in Adobe After Effects. Therefore every character has to be positioned by hand. But since this font is suited for short stuff, instead of bodytext, it's still fairly quick to set up."

Iaenic shows how he made 3D animated wings in After Effects with Trapcode 3D Stroke in a new tutorial video (via Lester Banks). He also takes you through several techniques for working with After Effects' faux 3D space.

August 29, 2010

The Adobe Forum has an After Effects FAQ List, which has about 20 FAQs by Todd Kopriva and Adolfo Rozenfeld. These cover many basic common problems from CS4, as well as adding some recent general guidance.

August 27, 2010

AE Scripts is offering 40%-off a trio of After Effects filters in the new TV Distortion Bundle. Satya Meka's 3 TV distortion plug-ins include: Data Glitch, Bad TV, and Separate RGB. These filters may not create a disturbance in the force or a glitch in the matrix, but they'll help you to create analog TV distortion with control over vertical, horizontal syncs and scanline distortion; VCR, DV Tape and audio reactive image glitch effects; and compression artifacts.

August 26, 2010

[Update: Depth was launched August 31. According to Mark Christiansen, "Depth does just what the name implies, easily extracting 3D depth data for use with Digieffects plug-ins such as Camera Mapper, Atmosphere and Falloff Lighting ... I especially like it for lens effects that can use depth information to create beautiful cinematic bokeh blurs."]

Digieffects seems to be breaking off another plug-in from its legacy products with the launch of Depth, a filter found in the old Buena Depth Cue package. There's no official pricing yet, just Vimeo video partly via Lester Banks:

August 25, 2010

AE Scripts has a great collection of scripts to make working in AE 3D easier. There's a new version of Create3DShapes that allows you to distribute layers as a box, sphere, cylinder, pyramid, or ellipsoid (e.g. rugby ball, with controllable x,y,z-radius) -- as well as a 3D Platonic solids (see video), a MengerSponge (pictured), and 3DFallingDominoes. This version has a gain in speed using precomputed arrangements and can create a giant sphere with up to 1000 layers in seconds.

"I think possibly my favorite feature / concept in all of Photoshop (and Lightroom / ACR) is the Targeted Adjustment concept, because it is both very accurate and FAST. Much faster than prior methods of working with contrast and color. The ability, whether working with HSL, Curves or Hue & Saturation (and hopefully more features in the future like Shadow and Highlight!) to directly target the tones and colors you want to work on, without any guesswork or re-dos, is extremely useful."

A more visual UI and new ways to encapsulate properties, like you see in node-based applications, would be useful too. Of course, Todd Kopriva already posted suggestions on how to give feedback to Adobe.

"Matchmoving has been discussed a lot these days and it has become accessible for more and more people. With the introduction of programs like Syntheyes, PFTrack, and The Foundry’s CameraTracker plug-in the reconstructing of a 3D camera move has been made easier. A lot of people however are not aware of other solutions that are available, like free software. Voodoo Camera Tracker is one of those pieces of software and today I´ll be showing you how to solve your shot and then create some awesome 3D stuff..."

"The widespread fascination with the Mad Men series is far more than just simple nostalgia. It is about how we feel about ourselves and our society today.

In Mad Men we watch a group of people who live in a prosperous society that offers happiness and order like never before in history and yet are full of anxiety and unease. They feel there is something more, something beyond. And they feel stuck.

I think we are fascinated because we have a lurking feeling that we are living in a very similar time. A time that, despite all the great forces of history whirling around in the world outside, somehow feels stuck. And above all has no real vision of the future.

And as we watch the group of characters from 50 years ago, we get reassurance because we know that they are on the edge of a vast change that will transform their world and lead them out of their stifling technocratic order and back into the giant onrush of history.

The question is whether we might be at a similar point, waiting for something to happen. But we have no idea what it is going to be."

His tutorial is based on his older one, but now custom lens flares are far more accessible with the release of the inexpensive yet deep VC plug-in. For background see Video Copilot Optical Flares in review.

August 19, 2010

"Break the boundaries of 3D work in After Effects. Learn from award-winning designer Steve Holmes how to take your textured Photoshop images and layer them with Ribbit Films footage from the Artbeats FootageHub, along with Magic Bullet Looks plug-in from Red Giant Software to create the impression of true 3D space."

August 18, 2010

Knoll Unmult is the original free After Effects plug-in for removing black backgrounds and generating mattes, and is now available for CS3, CS4, and CS5.

A similar filter shipped with AE CS5, but doesn't get installed by default; see Unmult for CS5: Pixel Bender 'Alpha from Max Color' for background on that Pixel Bender and how to do-it-yourself with channel filters. Here's a 3-minute excerpt from a recent tutorial that explains what Knoll Unmult does and how it works:

Update: Premiumbeat has something similar, taking "a look at the process of stabilizing footage using Adobe After Effects built in Stabilization feature. We will also look at how to apply a graphical element to the stabilized footage and then how to reverse the stabilization, to give a motion tracked effect to the graphics."

"Some people like to use Nulls or Solids as emitters in Particular, and some like to use Lights. But when is it best to use one or the other? Both have strength and weaknesses. Here you'll learn where an when to use them. Hey - it's not glamorous stuff, but this is some good Trapcode Particular info that will help you out when you need better control of your emitters."

August 17, 2010

XML Gibson from Sebastian Perier at AE Scripts.com is a script that allows you to export your composition to XML files, with more parameters than After Effects' saves of it’s projects. XML Gibson lets you export your composition to "XML with almost all information from your composition: layers, keyframes, effects, all in editable form. Some information can’t be exported to XML due to scripting restriction, such has curves, histograms, and some text properties."

Two recent video tutorials showed how to use Trapcode Particular for film looks:

GC Swot posted 39. Aged Film Using Particles on "how to create film scratches, dirt and dust using Trapcode Particular, which can be saved as an importable element for future projects. Learn how to color correct the footage for an aged, vintage film look..."

Now, with light leaks, is Red Giant Quicktip #17: Old Film Look, "Aharon Rabinowitz shows you how to create an old film look with light leaks. He'll be using Trapcode Particular to create the light leaks, and the tools in Magic Bullet Looks to create the look of old damaged footage."

via @EdenExposito, Harry Frank has a new tutorial (in QT), Using the toComp Expression, which demonstrates easy-to-use methods on how to use the “toComp” expression with lens flares, light rays, and the Beam filter.

August 10, 2010

In AE Tutorial – Super-quick carbon fibre effect, Shortformvideo shows you "how you can create a realistic carbon fibre texture in After Effects using Ramp and CC RepeTile. It takes a few seconds to create, and works really well in high-tech or motoring videos. You can also download the project file..."

Shortformvideo also posted a video of a classic technique that combines blur, noise and time control settings to create a brushed metal effect.

Last March at NAB, The Foundry made a splash with news of new plug-ins for After Effects, Kronos and 3D CameraTracker, which are being released today.

Kronos is for "hard core retiming" -- leveraging GPU and built on a newer foundation than the previously-licensed Timewarp filter bundled in After Effects.

Camera Tracker is a new After Effects plug-in for matchmoving by The Foundry. It analyzes "source sequences to extract the original camera's lens and motion parameters, allowing you to composite 2D or 3D elements correctly with reference to the camera used to film the shot. You can now match camera moves within Adobe® After Effects®' 2.5D environment, opening up new, robust options for the placement of composite elements, such as the creation of Fringe / Heroes style 'in scene' titles, the virtual extension of sets", etc...

Update: on the AE-List November 2011, Chris Prosser (software engineering manager for After Effects) said "Alas, RAW is just slow. The engine highly optimizes quality over speed due to its heritage. I often will convert them to a better intermediate format (some kind of 16 bit format)."

Creating After Effects plug-ins using the SDK is "surprisingly easy" -- if you believe the aging MacTech article (from Volume15, Number 9): “How to Write Plug-Ins for Adobe After Effects” by Kas Thomas (web archive). What they mean is that it's easy if you're a C or C++ programmer, or have ingrained faculties like Satya. But the SDK itself does include its own introduction, which is intelligible to everyone who wants to know what AEGP or PiPL means.

"I think the After Effects SDK is way easier. For example, your standard UI can be built with just a few lines of code and will be totally cross-platform. And don't worry about putting a preview in your interface - it already happens in the comp window. AE works a bit differently from Photoshop so there's a learning curve, but porting should be pretty easy once you figure it out."

"The thing I found most confusing is the calling sequence. When Photoshop calls your filter plugin, it follows a pretty standard sequence telling you what to do next. AE is a little more fluid in that sometimes you might not get called to do certain things, while other times you will. But once you look through the example code and write one, it starts to make sense. Be sure to join Adobe's mailing list so you can ask questions about the process when you get stuck."

Update: in June 2001, Audrey Doyle published Mix & Match in Computerworld, a brief history of AE plug-ins.

August 5, 2010

which "shows you how you can quickly and easily use Magic Bullet Colorista II for cosmetic skin retouching. You'll learn simple and effective techniques for subtly downplaying signs of age (such as wrinkles or skin blemishes), and giving pale skin a healthy color, without effecting other elements in your shot."

GenArts just announced Monsters GT for the Mac, with over 50 effects including a variety of stylize, distort effects, fluid, trail, and particle effects. A Windows version is also available for CS5 & CS4.

PVC has a nice review of this filter set by Kevin P McAuliffe. [update: see also his Review - Genarts Sapphire v5 for Adobe’s After Effects]Monsters GT has floating point support, and the fluid simulation filters especially will benefit from GPU optimization, supported at the maximum in NVidia GeForce 200 or 400 series or Quadro 5800. Many of these are unique filters from the Flame and Smoke world, though some are similar to other AE filters. Monsters GT was acquired in the purchase of SpeedSix, adding to GenArts stable of AE filter sets that include Sapphire, Tinder, and particleIllusion. Monsters GT features these tools:

Stylize effects such as CCTV, NightVision and Brush

Warps and distort effects such as HeatHaze, Puddle and Ripple

Particle effects such as Rain, Smoke and Snow

Fluidz, a set of plug-ins that use the power of 2d fluid dynamics to create Fire and fluid flow simulations (was in Raptors)

Trailz, a set of plug-ins that create a variety of smooth, particulate and stop-motion trails (was in Raptors).

Here's an overview, plus a demo of the Aurora (Autodesk version), which generates images similar to Trapcode Form:

August 4, 2010

Video Copilot has added native motion blur, along with bug fixes, in a free update to Optical Flares:
"The feature is simple to use, just turn on motion blur for the layer and comp switch, then adjust the samples in the plug-in Motion Blur roll-out. The light streaks in the sample video are made with Particular and the light is moving with a wiggle expression. Remember, too many motion blur samples can be slower so adjust the value as needed for your project."

"Mysterious and possibly nefarious trading algorithms are operating every minute of every day in the nation's stock exchanges.

What they do doesn't show up in Google Finance, let alone in the pages of the Wall Street Journal. No one really knows how they operate or why. But over the past few weeks, Nanex, a data services firm has dragged some of the odder algorithm specimens into the light.

The trading bots visualized in the stock charts in this story aren't doing anything that could be construed to help the market. Unknown entities for unknown reasons are sending thousands of orders a second through the electronic stock exchanges with no intent to actually trade. Often, the buy or sell prices that they are offering are so far from the market price that there's no way they'd ever be part of a trade. The bots sketch out odd patterns with their orders, leaving patterns in the data that are largely invisible to market participants.

In fact, it's hard to figure out exactly what they're up to or gauge their impact. Are they doing something illicit? If so, what? Or do the patterns emerge spontaneously, a kind of mechanical accident? If so, why? No matter what the answers to these questions turn out to be, we're witnessing a market phenomenon that is not easily explained. And it's really bizarre."

August 3, 2010

Quba Michalski shows you how to create a Light Wall – an array of lights driven by an animated image map that can be used for either cool light/flare looks or for precise control over the particles. There's a free tutorial, project, and preset on his website; the preview is below.

In an excerpt from a recent Adobe E-seminar, Motionworks looks at animation possibilities made easy by the new Align and Distribute to Composition and Orient Characters Independently features in After Effects CS5.

There are many ways to do things in AE and some usage patterns can lead to us ignore existing features. For example, if you want to select all keyframes with the same value for one property, just right-click on one of the keyframes and choose "Select Equal Keyframes."

Working with Power Masks in Colorista II with Stu Maschwitz shows "Colorista II's Power Masks, with a focus on interaction between the masks as well as using motion tracking (in AE) to get convincing and consistent color correction."